


And the strays are pining for their unrequited mothers

by Sarahzile



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Corporate, F/F, Genderbending, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 20:41:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarahzile/pseuds/Sarahzile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor receives a visit from her wayward not-sister.  Things seem to be going well for the future CEO of Asgard Industries, but it never quite goes that way, does it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the strays are pining for their unrequited mothers

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Andrew Bird's "Cataracts". If we're angsting, why not go whole hog and deploy song lyrics? I promise, that's the only point here where this will happen.

On the way back from the airport, the truck is silent. Loki curls into the passenger seat, tapping on her phone, ignoring the scenery and the driver. Thor fiddles with the heating controls.

“So, you hungry?” Thor knows better than to ask her sister what she’s been up to.

Loki looks up and smiles.

“Yes, of course.”  
___

It's loud in the restaurant. The proprietors are fond of an oddly upbeat variant of grindcore, while the dingy lights and cluttered walls attract college students in swarms. Loki has to shout over the noise.

"You tell her I'm home?"

"Well, no....” Thor fiddles with her straw. “I didn't think you wanted me to say anything. Mom'd like to hear from you, though."

Loki grunts and starts in on another taco. She’s terrible at concealing her intent. Others might miss it, but Thor sees the a brittleness that forms at any mention of mothers. It wouldn’t surprise her to hear that Loki has been practicing this exchange from the moment she bought her ticket. Pacing around her hotel room, bare feet digging into the carpet, tendons in her arms contracting and releasing as she gestures to the air.

A few minutes pass and Thor thinks that maybe that's it, that was the most difficult part of this trip and now they can go back to the apartment and hang out and watch some shitty TV. There's a stupid special about Bigfoot on tonight. Loki would love to make snide comments about that, and then they’ll drink and eat junk food and -

"She's your mother. Not mine."

"I don't want to fight about it."

"Then let's not."  
___  
When they arrive at the apartment, Thor throws her jacket onto a pile near the door,, throws herself down into the groaning couch cushions, and grabs the remote all in one fluid motion. The movement bespeaks months, if not years, of practice.

Loki wanders into the bedroom and sets her bag on the floor. She remembers the space well enough that she doesn’t bother with the light. She stands in the dark, breathing in the stale, close smell of the room. The whole apartment could do with a good airing-out, but that will have to wait until the warmer months. For now it’s freezing outside, though the streets remain bare of snow. Even Loki wouldn’t be so cruel as to fling the windows open to the elements.

She finds the mustiness of Thor's room comforting. It’s evidence that the place is lived in. Nearly every month of the past two years has meant a new room, new smells, new sights, new sounds. A deep unfamiliarity become familiar all over again. She’s never been one for typical comforts, but even Loki has to admit that stability is appealing.

So is Thor - big, steady, grinning Thor. A golden lab turned woman, all smiles and boundless energy. Thor will be a fine CEO at Asgard Industries; that is, if she can only stand straight and grow up. She is awfully fond of boozy parties and dissolute friends, after all.

There are rumors that the old woman of the company is beginning to look particularly old, enough to cause concern about the succession. Most acknowledge Thor’s claim to the throne, though some of the speculations are frankly outlandish, particularly those that figure the wayward adopted daughter into the picture.

Loki snorts to herself and sits on the bed. Her hand finds the inevitable pile of shirts. She begins folding them automatically.

She's surprised that anyone remembers her now. Of course, there were all those early photos and reports, her glowering out of the background in some hideous dress chosen by the nanny. Even then, she was not an appealing child. Loki wonders if she frightened everyone with her intense and changeable moods, her cutting remarks, the odd way in which computers went missing and reappeared in new places. She was a clumsy thief, initially.

Perhaps she is giving herself too much credit. Back then, she was just as much of a well-meaning dolt as Thor, though both went about it in spectacularly different ways.

They were supposed to be America’s foremost family, to show just how much happiness money and success could bring. The reality of it had turned out to be a series of complicated rhetorical devices and photo opportunities. Once she figured it out, the whole of the experience had soured.

Loki had been gripped by an urge to destroy it all, particularly when the adoption had been brought to light by a persistent journalist. She very nearly did, what with the dramatic exit from the company, from the family, from nearly everyone and everything.

At least she hadn’t gone to any of the gossip magazines. Reporters had nearly knocked her apartment door off its hinges in the weeks immediately after her departure. She would sit on the couch, listening to the incessant buzzing of the doorbell (or pounding on the door, if the paparazzi were especially bold and had managed to sneak past the doorman), and testing just how effective her headphones were at blocking noise.

Her refusal to speak was a matter of personal dignity, more than anything. Of course she was angry and deeply, desperately hurt by the revelation of her adoption. Still, spilling it all to the press seemed beyond shameful. She may have felt like half a human being, or none at all, but that didn’t mean she was without honor. True to her word, the old woman let her go, never sent the police around for what surely was sensitive information hidden throughout her apartment. So perhaps the confused guilt was mutual.

The files remain, naturally. Despite all of her misgivings, Loki is no idiot. There is always room for a last resort and, besides, doesn’t she have a few vague, unformed ideas about how the company should function, what a true and worthy CEO would do to keep everything together? Still, even now, the thought of a vengeful takeover doesn’t bring her any pleasure - only a dull, dry-mouthed kind of sadness.

The click and buzz of the television turning on creeps around the corner. She hardly notices, not even when the sound of some ludicrous documentary begins to blare. She only leaves when Thor calls her name.  
___

“Is it going to be alright?” She isn’t crying - Loki never cries, of course, never displays any emotion that isn’t locked up behind a screen behind a door behind a brick wall - but there’s a tightness to her face that Thor can just barely read.

She’s always been a little unnerved by Loki- not because of the silence, or the strange books, or the occasional outbursts that inevitably resulted in tears and bloody noses. It’s this same tenseness she sees now that puts her on edge, this coiled wire tightness that has never really resolved itself through all of the screaming and fighting and sewn-shut angry glares.

Thor worries about her, worries that something will snap one day. All of that tension will have to go somewhere eventually, won't it? Thor is constantly positioning herself between Loki and the rest of the world, to protect one or the other.

"Yes, of course it's going to be alright. It was always going to be alright."

Loki shrugs like she’s shaking something off her shoulders, picks up the remote, and begins flipping through the channels. She settles on an angry news show and Thor is willing to watch even that if it means there will be peace. For a few minutes it’s just like that, and Thor lets herself settle into it like a damned fool.

During a commercial, Loki turns to her. “You remember when I used to live back home?”  
“Yes...” Thor ventures. She only turns halfway to look at Loki, cautious, wondering if staying still will somehow keep this powder keg from exploding. Loki’s crouched on the sofa, knees to chest, spindly arms wrapped around her legs. She’s staring directly at Thor.

“And how it would get so cold, and we’d sneak around at night and somehow we’d always end up in the other’s room.”

“Mhm....”

She leans in suddenly, still looking directly at Thor, holding herself together, but her body is against Thor’s. She’s warmer than Thor had imagined. All this talk of cold, this freezing weather, and she’s blazing like a furnace.

“And there was that night after she told me I wasn’t hers, and you’d just come back from some conference, Young Business Leaders of Whatever or something, and she hadn’t even told you yet. Like it was some dirty secret.”

Thor only nods. She does remember, recalls sitting on her bed amongst a pile of wrinkled clothes and suitcases, aching after days in heels and tailored suits, feeling strange and out of herself. She remembers Loki standing in front of her, crying. It was the first time she’d ever seen her sister cry. Only now she wasn’t her sister. She was someone else entirely, an interloper, said Loki. No. Bullshit. Thor didn’t care.

She had pulled Loki close, felt the fragility and rage humming underneath her skin. And then they were on the bed, suitcases pushed off, and her mouth on hers, warm, angry, needy.

Loki had withdrawn not long after. She hid in the halls for a few days and never answered the knocks on her door. Then she was gone.

“Sometimes I miss being that way.”

“Don’t say that,” because those were angry times, sad times, and Thor’s whispering, because everything has to be calculated not to scare Loki away, not to ruin this rare closeness.

“Well, I do. I mean it. I miss that, all of that, everything.” And she’s close, so close, their faces are right next to each other, and Thor can’t help but turn towards her.

Loki leans forward and presses her mouth to Thor’s. It’s a little sad, a little hungry.

Thor hesitates for a second, then presses back. Her hand trails up Loki’s arm and nestles along the curve of her jaw.

She wraps her other arm around Loki’s waist and falls back onto the couch, pulling the smaller woman on top of her. Loki straddles her hips. Thor can only see Loki’s face in the flickering light of the TV, something ghostly and shifting.

Thor’s hands travel up and down Loki’s body, the undulating ridges of her ribs, the hips, the thighs, back up to the bony shoulders and her jaw and down and back and over again. Her skin is hot, feverish. She doesn’t tremble, but there’s a nervous, hectic energy just underneath the surface, like an electric current hidden beneath her skin.

Loki pauses for a moment, hands hovering over Thor’s shoulders. They shake a little, almost imperceptibly, but her intentions are clear. Loki reaches behind Thor’s back and slips the clasp of her bra apart, slides both undergarment and shirt off in one hasty movement.

She leans down and takes one nipple in her teeth, gently, runs her tongue back and forth. Thor closes her eyes and exhales heavily. Loki makes a pleased sound and proceeds to deal with Thor’s pants, pulling them off after a few seconds of fumbling with the fly.

“Mm, no, wait a minute,” Thor mumbles as Loki hooks a finger into the waistband of her underwear. “This isn’t fair.”

Loki looks up, arches an eyebrow.

Thor only shakes her head and laughs before pushing Loki back against the other side of the couch and pulling the woman’s shirt and shorts off.

Loki curls up, folding her arms against her chest. She is luminously white against the cushions. Her hair has come undone from its ponytail and flows out beneath her in a halo. Thor trails a hand underneath the long, luxuriant waves, wondering how an aggressively unsentimental creature such as Loki allows herself this one extravagance.

Thor buries her face against Loki’s neck, licks the sensitive skin there all the way up to her ear. Loki twists underneath Thor’s weight, whimpers, opens her legs a little.

“No,” Thor says, fingers trailing up Loki’s thigh. “No, you can’t hurt me at all.”

“Liar,” Loki says, then gasps as Thor slides one finger in, then two, her thumb moving over Loki’s clitoris in lazy circles.

She knows not to be gentle, knows when to thrust, when to hold still as Loki rolls her hips back and forth, when to bite. Things have never been gentle between them. It feels like it always did, like home, like something falling into place. Thor lowers her head to one breast, curls her fingers, pushes deeper.

Loki starts to shake and nearly falls off the couch. She clutches at the cushions as Thor withdraws and picks her up. The door to the bedroom is open. Thor carries her through and tosses her on the bed, gently, laughing. Even Loki has to laugh a little as she bounces, as Thor kneels and pulls Loki by her hips towards the edge of the bed.

There are a very limited number of times Loki has allowed herself to let go completely, to exist outside of herself as an unbound entity. She can count those instances on one hand.

They were all with Thor.

She adds another entry into her tally.  
___

Loki waits until Thor is snoring before she slips out from between the covers. She scrabbles around on the bedside table until her hand falls on the pack of cigarettes and the lighter, then makes her way through the living room and onto the balcony. The sliding door is badly in need of maintenance - it grinds and groans as she pushes it open, heaving against the warped metal track. It makes a monstrous noise. Loki would be afraid of waking Thor if she weren’t familiar with the woman’s profound insensibility when asleep. She may as well be dead.

It’s freezing out on the balcony. Loki manages to fold her frame into the filthy deck chair that crowds the space. She makes a note to chide Thor for neglecting the apartment. It’s a mess, really, hardly fitting the darling daughter and future CEO of Asgard Industries. At least she knows how to look good in a suit.

Now, though, Loki just wants to be alone out here, smoking one cigarette after another until whatever is inside her quiets. The bed is too hot, too crowded, too full of limbs and tangled covers and discarded clothes for her to sleep properly. She'd flopped around extravagantly, hoping to wake Thor up, if only to not be the sole insomniac in the apartment. It didn't work, of course.

She starts to shiver. Shorts and a t-shirt are hardly appropriate for February. She should go back inside, to the warmth of the bed and her long-limbed, clingy, grinning, sleeping companion.

She stretches her legs out, feet on the wobbly plastic side table. The bitter, anxious worm is still creeping its way through her system. She’d just as soon stand in the kitchen and break each plate, grimly, methodically, until even Thor would wake and stumble out of the bedroom, all questions and tangled hair. Those dull, confused eyes. Always questions, questions, questions, and never an answer.

Not yet.

There’s a sudden crash below, followed by giggling and shushing. Loki leans over the railing, frowning, tapping ash off the edge. Ugh. It’s those four idiots, returning from whatever dive bar is trendy this week. What other group would contain the immense, hulking form of Volstagg, she of the red hair and, currently, even redder cheeks? It looks as if she’s the one that crashed into the garbage cans now strewn throughout the street. Hogun and Fandral are attempting to roll them back into their original position, stumbling and snorting with laughter, failing completely. Sif is valiantly trying to support a very handsy Volstagg; he would be failing spectacularly if it weren’t for sheer willpower and gallantry alone.

Loki snorts and begins to retreat back over the edge, but not before she feels the first snowflakes melting on the nape of her neck.

She looks up and lets them fall onto her face, staring up past the streetlights and into the darkness, vainly looking for stars or even passing planes in the cloudy, light-polluted sky. Nothing. Still, it feels good to just stand there, to be cold and angry and irritated and lonely, to let it all wash over her while the snow piles up below.

From beneath the balcony there come more slurred exclamations as the hipsters three and Lord Sif try to catch snowflakes on their tongues. They only manage to fall into a steadily growing snowdrift, still laughing and clutching at each other for support.  
___  
Loki clears out in the morning, after Thor has left for the office. She has the decency to leave a note behind on the kitchen counter, promising her quick return.  
Lies, deceit, and treachery. It is her forte, after all.  
___  
By afternoon, Loki had managed to procure a fairly nice hotel room downtown. She drags her various bags in and throws them on the bed, one by one. She tries to slam the door, but it’s pneumatic and refuses to do more than wheeze quietly into place.  
The view of the city from her window is fantastic. All of the buildings tumble before her, masses of steel and glass dotted with the occasional lonely potted tree. Whenever she can, Loki tries to get a room near the top of a building, preferably one in the center of whatever city she’s in. Looking down on the minutiae of daily life, all of the dots moving from subway to building to hot dog stand and back again, so far removed that she’s nearly in the clouds - it’s all deeply satisfying in a way that she can’t quite articulate, not yet.

When she finally turns away from the view, it’s dusk. There’s a knock at the door, quiet, respectful. The staff at this hotel are exceptional, skilled in the art of hushed, disinterested intrusions into visitors’ lives. She prefers this place, having been in town when work required it but finding herself unable to face Thor. She thought that the nexus of the city would be the least likely place that her pseudo-sister would linger and, so far, she’s been proven correct. Loki walks over to the door and opens it. A clerk excuses himself and hands her an envelope before disappearing.

Loki turns it over in her hands and finds a seal on the back. Yes, a wax seal, of all things. It should be ridiculous, but something about the weight, the feel of the envelope make her feel as if this should be taken seriously. This isn’t someone with a little money trying to play it off as if they’re rich, as so many of her clients attempt to do. This is someone with so much power that even their stationary radiates it.

Embossed in the center of the red wax is an ornate L. Nothing more.

She doesn't know how they managed to reach her at the hotel, of all places. Yet here is the letter in her hand, crisp and clean, on tasteful off-white stationary. Loki slides a finger underneath the seal and unfolds the letter, eyes running over the contents. It’s even signed by a real person, the ink slightly blurred where a hand swept across the wet signature.

She scans the page, hardly reading it, before her eyes drift back to the top. Laufeyson, Inc., proclaims the understated header.

She looks back at the letter, reads it again as if for the first time.

Ms. Loki Laufeyson, the salutation reads. Not Odinson. Not even Lyesmith, the ridiculous false name she took after her departure.

Laufeyson.

The rest of the letter makes no allusions.

Loki had thought that she would one day find her real parents. If she had put her mind to it, she could have used her considerable skill to track them down in a matter of days. In her weaker moments, she had fantasized a weepy reunion, a place where she finally feels that she belongs.

This is no epiphany. There is no joy. It leaves her numb. It feels as if her body remains in the room while her consciousness is floating somewhere near the ceiling.

Laufeyson. She’s seen their pictures, their tall, skinny frames and dark hair. The cold cast to their eyes. Perhaps if she hadn't been so keen to ignore her legacy within the company, had actually paid attention to all those televised press conferences - studying the enemy, they'd half-joked - she would have noticed. The crooked half smile, blurred into pixels but still visible.

This isn’t happening. She only knew half the story, only scratched at the rest, ached for the full tale, but this. This is not what she was expecting. This is not what she wanted. This can’t be real.

Thor, she thinks, unbidden. I’m sorry. I really am.

Then she thinks of the old woman, the way she broke the news in an empty boardroom. Just her and Loki at opposite ends of a table that stretched for miles. Perfectly manicured nails toying with an ornamental apple, her only hint of nervousness. Yet her voice was still blank, still cold.

You are not one of us. You never were. You have no past, no country, no kin.

Back in the hotel room, Loki begins to shake. She sets the letter down and forces herself into the bathroom, underneath the running shower. She stays there until the quaking subsides.

Loki re-enters the room wrapped in a towel and sits down at the desk. The hotel letterhead is hardly on par with the fine paper before her, but it will have to do. She doesn’t read the letter again. There is no need.  
___

Thor had known even before the press conference went live. Mother had called her, using that same cold detached voice she'd employed years ago. She's with them now. We need to start planning damage control. No, don't come in today. Just have something by tomorrow morning.

Loki's not at the conference itself. She's far too reserved. Thor wouldn't be surprised if this attempt at anonymity is a hedged bet, planning for the power that comes from being relatively unknown. She’s always done her best work in the shadows.

Thankfully, Ms. Laufeyson doesn't make the connection obvious. Just the recovery of a long-lost daughter, the joyous welcome into their loving arms. The words are just a tad overwrought, too ornate for Loki’s tastes. Thor predicts that the poor speech writer will be fired by the end of the week.

She wonders why everything is so innocuous. Perhaps there's something more sinister at work. Loki still has a great many corporate secrets squirreled away inside her brain. She wouldn't go that far, would she?

Thor was constantly puzzling out Loki’s intentions, but her schemes were always directed at others. Now Thor wonders if she is finally the target of these machinations. Loki always skirted her then-sister, avoided harming her in any meaningful way. It was the only way that Thor was ever sure of her love. Avoidance of direct harm. Genuine remorse when it occurred (tightened jaw, averted gaze, nervous fingers preceding a blurted apology).

It may be very different now. The betrayal is complete, laid bare. It must cut Loki to the core, though it is a betrayal of omission rather than willful lies. Does that make a difference? Furthermore, why did Mother keep it a secret all these years, only revealing a crumb at a time? What calculations took place in her mind, told her that lies were necessary for the preservation of home, family, business? This doesn’t make any sense. She didn’t even tell Thor, her successor and natural daughter.

Without thought, Thor’s hand wanders to her phone. She’s already punched in the number and is about the hit call before she realizes what she’s doing. It sinks in then, while Thor is staring at the contact photo, the lopsided half-smile of someone reluctantly posing for a picture.

She hits the exit button and sets the phone down on the coffee table. She turns the channel to a stupid cartoon and tries to pretend as if nothing has happened. Tomorrow, she thinks. Tomorrow everything will explode and reform and I’ll deal with it then, but not now. Just not now.  
___  
Loki cannot come up with a proper ending.

She has settled into her new life as well as she can - a beautifully appointed set of rooms in the company tower, a proposed corner office, a father, a mother who sweeps Loki up into her arms at their first meeting. Loki had held back, looked for crocodile tears, but there were no cameras, no paparazzi, no one to play to.

Still, this is too much too soon, particularly for a family so reserved. There is a long game going on here, surely. Loki will have to be very cautious. Or is she just too far gone to believe that someone might want her unreservedly, without complication? Well. She has already proven that such devotion is not enough to keep her in one place. It’s a moot point, any way you choose to look at it.

Despite what everyone thinks, she’s not planning to betray Asgard Industries. She doesn’t want to betray anyone. It’s a filthy word. She only wants to bring things together, to piece all of the elements in a way that brings about an even greater rule than previously imagined.

She’s seen a path, a tiny thing that has been missed by everyone else. It is small and dark and cramped, but if she can keep as many secrets close to her chest as she can, things may work out - for her, for the corporations, for everyone. Certainly, they would work out for a pair of companies crippled by rivalry and short-sightedness. Think of how much could be accomplished, if only they were united by a single leader.

There are the secrets hidden away in her mind, of course. A few files squirreled away in odd locations. Then there are carelessly guarded offices in Laufeyson, Inc. Combination codes that will crumble beneath her fingers, laughable firewalls, paper files only a hidden drawer or two away from her grasp.

She could really do this. The plan may actually work. It fills her with an emotion she can’t quite place, planted somewhere in the middle ground between exhilaration and terror.

Yes. This could happen. Maybe she could salvage it after all, in spite of everything that has come before.

They don’t deserve this. Maybe she doesn’t either, but at least she knows the other side, knows what’s at stake. Considered in a certain light, it is her moral responsibility to grab hold and steer the ship away from the reef.

She will do this. Yes. She has to do this. Everything else is lost or broken, so she must build anew. It will work. Mothers and sisters and lovers be damned.

It’s her purpose, after all.


End file.
